A union did not
wait too long to sue a company that provides security services at Los Angeles
International Airport for interference with its organizing rights, the Ninth
U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled yesterday.

Senior
Judge Harry Pregerson wrote for the panel that the United Service Workers West,
part of the Service Employees International Union, was entitled to equitable
tolling of the statute of limitations with regard to its interference and
coercion claims against Command Security Corporation.

Command
is the parent company of Aviation Safeguards. The union sued for violation of
the Railway Labor Act in July 2012, after the company said it would not
participate in mediation with the National Mediation Board.

‘Crossroad’
Reached

The
company had voluntarily recognized the union, and signed a collective
bargaining agreement in 2008, and another one in 2009, set to expire in 2012.
In 2011, however, a company official told the union that it had reached a
“crossroad” and began an active effort to have the union decertified, according
to the evidence.

The
company then hired Cruz & Associates, which calls itself a “union
avoidance” firm. This led to a series of mandatory meetings designed to
persuade workers to turn against the union, allegedly including promises of
higher wages if the union were gone.

At
the end of 2011, the company announced that it would no longer recognize the
union and that health benefits and wages would change on Feb. 1, 2012. The
mediation board, at the union’s request, conducted a “pre-docketing” investigation
that took nearly six months before docketing the case for June 26.

Two
days later, the company said it would not mediate.

The
union sued on July 31, 2012. The company responded that the suit was untimely
and that the court lacked jurisdiction because the mediation board has
exclusive jurisdiction of representation disputes under the RLA.

Summary Judgment

U.S.
District Judge Stephen V. Wilson sided with the company and granted summary
judgment.

Pregerson,
however, said the RLA’s six-month limitation period is subject to equitable
tolling, and that the union had established equitable grounds for delaying the
suit.

The
union, he said, had been diligent in seeking signatures on a petition
supporting its continued representation of the workers and in pursuing
mediation, as provided for in the statute.

He
wrote:

“The
Mediation Board’s pre-docketing investigation lasted nearly six months. At no
point during that time did Aviation Safeguards indicate a refusal to mediate.
Aviation Safeguards waited until after the Mediation Board finished its nearly
six-month pre-docketing investigation before informing the Union that it would
not participate in mediation. The Union should not be punished for the
Mediation Board’s or Aviation Safeguards’s delays.”

The
judge went on to say that the union’s claims were within the jurisdiction of
the court because the parties’ disagreements constitute a “major dispute,”
beyond the scope of the mediation board’s exclusive jurisdiction.

On
remand, Pregerson wrote, the union is entitled to summary judgment on its
claims for interference and coercion, and for unlawful refusal to mediate.

The
opinion was joined by Judges Richard A. Paez and Jacqueline Nguyen.